Hollywood is an All Volunteer Army

by Steven Paul Leiva

“To attract the mad and homicidal?”

  “To go to a movie.”

  “I see. All right, well let’s contact Mr. Farber and set up an appointment.”

  “With whom? Federal Agent Harrington?”

  Federal Agent Harrington is one of 52 identities I can assume. Each one fully backed up by all the necessary documents. Some require make up. Some don’t. Some are scary. Some aren’t. One my mother would have recognized—but I’m not sure I would.

  “No, I’m sure Mr. Farber is cut from that part of the college cloth that finds anything Federal suspect. That would not be conducive to getting him to open up. How about J. W. Crick?”

  “The freelance reporter?”

  “Yes, on assignment from Vanity Fair to investigate the death of Bea Cherbourg.”

  “Bea Cherbourg was hardly famous. Why would Vanity Fair be interested?”

  “True. Not Dunne at all. All right, a general snippy piece on Death in Hollywood—death of dreams, death of ambition, death of people, and, more importantly, for Mr. Farber’s sake, death of Art. You know, the rot in the underbelly. That should attract him. Tell him the death of Bea is just serving as a metaphor for my larger purpose.”

  “For tomorrow?”

  “Yes, late afternoon. I’ll take the redeye tonight.”

  “Why the redeye? I can get you an earlier flight.”

  “No, the redeye will be fine. It will help make me naturally disheveled. There is, after all, I assume, some romance left in journalism.”

  *

  The next day, after a flight as disheveling as one can imagine—Roee, in the spirit of the enterprise, booked me into coach—I met Samuel Farber at the Film Studies Center of Yale, located in a building on Crown Street, which is, essentially, the southwest border of the campus proper. So 305 Crown Street faces out to reality, if one wanted to think of it that way, instead of in to ivory towers, which Yale claims not to have any of anyway.

  Farber greeted me in his small office, desk facing the wall, bookcases filled haphazardly, books and papers taking up space on the guest chairs and small guest couch, the graying computer on the desk clothed comfortably in a thick cloth of dust.

  Farber was a tall man of maybe forty-five who obviously jogged every morning to keep him fitting into traditional cut jeans, instead of the loose fit ones that were his right by age. They did look good, though. Especially coupled with close fitting Tshirts, like the one he was now wearing which featured the key art poster for the Polish release of Bonnie and Clyde. He had a head of hair so generous and thick you just knew that somewhere in the world there were at least ten men who suffered congenital baldness to compensate for the fact. He was, without a doubt, handsome, all could agree on that, male and female, the old and the young, those with 20/20 vision and even the blind.

  “So,” Farber said with a smile that seemed like a hug from a buddy wearing a cashmere sweater, “you’re from Vanity Fair?”

  “I’m a freelancer on assignment for them. I don’t normally cover things Hollywood, but Graydon thought I could bring a fresh perspective to an old story.”

  “The death of Art in Hollywood?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And the death of Bea.”

  “Were you shocked to learn of it?”

  “Of course. I’ve never lost a student before.”

  “You lost her?”

  “What I mean is, Bea is the first student, of all that I’ve taught, who’s died.”

  “You’ve been teaching…?”

  “Twenty years.”

  “And you know the whereabouts of all your past students, and their current states of health?”

  “Well, I suppose I meant students who had been special.”

  “Students who saw you as what? The master? A guru?”

  He smiled and very slowly shook his head, as if in pity for this outsider who just didn’t understand. “As a friend with a mind compatible to their own.”

  “Just minds?”

  “I have a suspicion what that question relates to, but maybe you should elaborate.”

  “Did you have an affair with Bea Cherbourg?”

  “Well, if I had, I truly apologize if it caused the death of Art in Hollywood.”

  “Would you be sorry if it had caused Bea’s death.”

  He took a second to think—but only a second. “I doubt that very much.”

  “How come you never went to Hollywood?”

  “I have too much respect for film.”

  “And you teach that respect to those students compatible with your mind?”

  “I think that’s probably an adequate description of my job.”

  “Is film an art?”

  “It can be.”

  “A powerful medium?”

  “Obviously. Whether it’s an art or not.”

  “What’s your assessment of the state of Hollywood film making today?”

  “My assessment is that the Hollywood film today has sunk into the cesspool of Multi-national-mega-corporation-think. That the art in the American film has not so much died, as that it has been put aside as irrelevant to the goals of the multi-national-mega-corporations. Product with shelf life is their concern, not human interactive communication regarding the shared human condition.”

  He had obviously given the question some thought.

  “‘Interactive communication regarding the shared human condition,’” I quoted back to him as I wrote it down in a notepad. “Is that your definition of Art?”

  “You have a better one?”

  “Yet, despite your opinion, you teach film studies.”

  “Well, doctors study disease.”

  “To find a cure?”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “Was Bea Cherbourg the first special student that you sent to Hollywood.”

  “What makes you think I sent her to—”

  “Sort of as a mole, to borrow a term from my usual journalistic beat. Except she wasn’t so much a mole, which is a gatherer of information, you were probably hoping she would be more of an agent provocateur, a spreader of information designed to agitate.”

  “A very melodramatic way to describe every teacher’s hope to have been a positive influence.”

  “Tell me about Bea Cherbourg.”

  “A brilliant student. She had an innate understanding of the language of cinema. She was extremely well read. Shy, non-aggressive, but forceful of mind when it mattered.”

  “A good lover?” All right, I was being a bit perverse here.

  Farber looked at me, trying to make up his mind. “Off the record?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Yes, she was an exceptional lover. She had a lovely need to please.”

  “Do you have affairs with all your female students?”

  “No. I pick one a year. One of the special ones. Passion intensifies intellectual transference. It’s a teaching technique.”

  “You know the time will come when, despite your charm and passion, age will catch up with you and 18 to 22 year olds will no longer be attracted.”

  “Yes, I’m aware of that.”

  “What will you be left with then?”

  “Just my memories.”

  “Well, those and an active imagination ought to see you through, I suppose.”

  “I’m counting on it.”

  “You contacted Sara Hutton and recommended Bea, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You taught Sara Hutton?”

  “She was a student of mine. She couldn’t be taught.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  “A privileged child.”

  “Yes, of a clown.”

  “Still privileged.”

  “Do you think this affected her?”

  “Well, when she came here as a freshman, her major was sociology.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yes, the cliché major of freshman girls.”

  “She wanted to be of used to people.”

  “Yes, to help them
.”

  “But she changed majors.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I think she discovered that she didn’t much like people, or, at least, certain people. The certain people that make up what we are now referring to as the underclass.”

  “Poor people.”

  “Poor. Ignorant. Uncultured. Simple. In her view, at least.”

  “So she became a film major?”

  “No. She became a philosophy major.”

  “A philosophy major?”

  “Became somewhat enamored with Plato’s Republic.”

  “Society divided into natural classes.”

  “You know, one of the great things about Yale is we are very community oriented. Especially through Dwight Hall. I would guess well over half our undergraduates take an active part in serving the community in efforts to fight poverty, hunger, homelessness. They help the elderly and disabled.”

  “You have your share of all that here in New Haven?”

  “More than. You may have noticed on the drive to the campus.”

  “And Dwight Hall?”

  “An independent service organization. Been helping people since 1886.”

  “Yet you still have more than your share of the underclass.”

  “Well, yes, but not way more than our share.”

  “So Sara Hutton, first year sociology major, jumped right in and volunteered, through Dwight Hall, to single-handedly solve the ills of New Haven.”

  “Yes she did, and then found the waters much too cold and jumped right out.”

  “How did you wind up having her in your class? She took it as an easy-A elective?”

  “Well, one, it’s not an easy-A elective, and she took it, I understand, at the suggestion of Max.”

  “Max who?”

  “I never got his last name.”

  “Another student?”

  “No. She knew him from somewhere else. I think they flew together.”

  “Flew?”

  “In airplanes.”

  “Yes, I assumed something mechanical was required.”

  “She had learned when she was quite young. Ten, twelve, something like that. Probably meant this Max at the airstrip where she kept her plane. I never met him, but I understand he was a bit of a philosopher himself and quite charismatic. They were lovers, of course.”

  “‘Sara Hutton couldn’t be taught.’ Your words.”

  “Once she lost her emotional virginity and discovered that no real harm was going to come to her if she gave up caring what other people thought, her true nature came out.”

  “Which was?”

  “Icy. Haughty. Superior. Condescending—no point could not be argued.”

  “Her mind was not compatible with yours.”

  “No, although I’ll admit enjoying the sparring. I think we became friends.”

  “Lovers?”

  “Not my type.”

  “Too ugly.”

  “Well, I do have standards along that line, but it was more—”

  “A total lack of influence on her thinking. Do you think she even likes movies?”

  “Not the ones I like.”

  “Yet she’s now the president of a major motion picture company.”

  “Interesting, isn’t it?”

  “Do you think she only entered the industry because nepotism made it an easy job to get?”

  “Riding in on the back of a clown? I’m sure it helped, but she entered at the suggestion of Max.”

  “He’s in the industry?”

  “I don’t know, but that’s what she told me on graduation day eight years ago. ‘Max thinks it’s a good idea if I get into the movies, so I guess I’m going to go to Hollywood,’ is the way she put it.”

  “Ever hear of the Golden Arse? And the kissing thereof?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Sounds very Greek though, doesn’t it?”

  “You referring to sodomy?”

  “No. Sororities. In this case, anyway.”

  “Gamma Phi Epsilon.”

  “That’s right. You do your research, don’t you?”

  “A film themed sorority that Sara Hutton was the president of.”

  “Yes, in her senior year. This was Max’s idea again, I think.”

  “How come you know so much about Max?”

  “I don’t, really. One just got to know a lot about Sara. People talked about her. She talked a lot about herself. She was sort of a continuing story you couldn’t help but follow.”

  “What do you think Sara Hutton’s influence on the American film has been?”

  “It’s not so much what it has been as what it could become. I mean she hasn’t really been there that long has she? The movies she makes at Olympic are essentially the equivalent in art to the original paperback novel trade. Cheap entertainment made for a cheap crowd. Only these films are anything but cheap. The crowd hasn’t changed much though.”

  “So who do you blame? Sara Hutton or the crowd?”

  Sam Farber smiled. “It’s such a symbiotic relationship I wouldn’t know how to divide it.”

  *

  An apt alliteration to call him an arrogant academic, I thought as I left Sam Farber’s office. How arrogant? There was no hint of emotion, and certainly no indication of grief, when we discussed Bea Cherbourg’s death, but then, despite them having been lovers, she had not really been a person to him, but, rather, a conduit of his ideas. He had not impregnated her, as far as I knew, in any biological way, but he certainly felt he had in an intellectual way, giving her a packet of, not genes, but memes, as Dawkins might declare. Is it a cause of grief if such a “mother” dies in “childbirth?” That would be antithetical to the rational basis of the conceit. Casual regret is the best one should expect.

  Yet, there is something very red meat about the lack of survival of these memes in comparison to those that Sara Hutton propagates. Had the contest been fair? Had the fittest truly survived? Had…?

  It must have been strolling along York Street into the campus proper that affected me. Something about the grand gothic architecture forming hallowed halls, and the bricks, the oh-so serious bricks. The bastard had balled her and propagandized his own thoughts into her head, then sent her off near defenseless to Hollywood to effect changes he never had the guts to personally try to do his self. Those were the hard facts. I didn’t much care for Sam Farber, but he had given me some valuable information. There is nothing like philosophy to get you into trouble.

  Chapter Eight

  Quality Crafted in the USA

  I had continued to walk deeper into the campus, but at a quicker pace, allowing the brisk air inhaled to stimulate the senses and add a little snap to my brain. I turned right at one point, ending up at a corner in sight of what I assumed was Harkness Tower, judging by the sign that was pointing its way. Across the street I could see an open area leading to a square surrounded by the Old Campus, the generative core of the university. I jaywalked and made my way there, to look for a comfortable place to alight and do some hard thinking. Unfortunately, as starkly beautiful as the square was with its snow covered ground; tall, bare, frost covered oak and elm trees; and deeply European feel to the surrounding buildings, I found not one place to sit to take this all in. Not one bench. Not even a fountain with a convenient ledge. Obviously, when snow did not cover the ground, the lawn now hidden underneath was the main cushion for the young bodies housing the young minds that were in the midst of Ivy League enlightenment—but that is age old for the young, who don’t worry about the effects of Nature on clothing and spinal columns. I, on the other hand, even when young, always somehow found it demeaning—“demeaning” may be too strong of a word, of course, but it’s close to the meaning—to sit, squat and sprawl like a primitive man who had not yet invented the obvious improvement of the chair. To do so for reasons of stealth, of course, was another matter, but when there is no professional impediment to comfort required, I require comfort. Given the limited resources, I leaned
up against a tree.

  In my search I had made my way across the two acres of the square and was now facing the extent of it, looking across it directly towards Harkness Tower. Very Gothic, very natural looking framed by the skeletal trees in winter starkness, very Old World.

  This was the area where the freshman come to live, I recalled from the quick research I did before coming. I tried to imagine an 18-year-old Sara Hutton sitting here surrounded by this old brick womb of best-and-brightest nurturing, dealing with her newfound revulsion for the Underclass. I thought of her staring at the beauty of these buildings, their Gothic Revival and Romanesque styles seeming to speak of just what wonders Man has built and I thought of her comparing that with the blight of the urban decay that surrounded the campus. Who did the building? Who caused the decay? Natural questions. It’s her answers that may have been unnatural.

  I took my cell phone out of my pocket and called Roee and had him patch me through the secure line to Petey.

  “Fixxer! Where are you?! I hear bells!” Petey came through, as always, loud and clear.

  “Bells?”

  “Yeah, you know, of the ding-dong variety!”

  I stopped to listen. Petey was right. The crisp air was alive with the successive tones of striking clappers beating out music unfamiliar to me. Having been deep in thought, I hadn’t notice. “I’m on the Yale campus in New Haven. There’s a big gothic tower in front of me. I guess it’s coming from there.”

  “Yeah, but what’s that music? I know that?”

  “I don’t know. Listen, I want—”

  “Sure you do, you’ve got to know it. Everybody knows it!”

  “Well, assuming you’re a part of everybody, Petey, you tell me.”

  “No, no, I just can’t think of it right now, but I know it.”

  I listened for another second. “Well, it’s innocuous and inane. Does that help?”

  “No. So many things are these days. Oh well. Yale, uh? What could they possibly teach you?”

  “I haven’t decided on a major yet. I need your help, Petey. You anywhere near the computer?”

  “Sure, I just happen to have been poking around in it when you called.”

  “Can you check the database on air fields in this area? Not Tweed-New Haven, or any other commercial field. I’m looking for some small, most likely private fields.”